I can hardly be wrong if I write that for the average American, baseball is something of a religion.
Of course, there are Americans who do not like baseball and do not watch, but there are not many of them, and the exceptions only confirm the rule.
The names of the great baseball players are known better than the names of the presidents, and the balls with their autographs go from auctions for a lot of money.
A game that causes some surprise among foreigners - "how can it be interesting at all?"
- in the USA for a long time, almost a century and a half, has been considered a cult.
One of the major events in the world of baseball is the All-Star Game, or Midsummer Classic.
An epic match in which the all-star National and American Baseball teams from the Major League Baseball, MLB, the NBA in basketball, the NFL in American football or the NHL in hockey play against each other.
This has been accompanied by artfully media-fueled hype and disappearance from free ticket sales long before the start of the match.
At the same time, ticket prices, to put it mildly, bite: in 2019, the average price per ticket was $ 282, and speculators were already reselling them for $ 800.
Now multiply this money by the 35,000 spectators who, on average, come to watch the game at the stadium.
Good business!
The combination of the popular love of baseball with the American penchant for putting on shows, even on a regional scale, makes the All-Star Game one of the most anticipated and profitable sporting events of the year, comparable to the final game of American football champions - Super Bowl.
Naturally, there is a real struggle for the right to hold the All-Star Game, the winner in which receives a lot of bonuses.
Back in May 2019, the capital of Georgia, Atlanta, was chosen to host the Midsummer Classics for the 2020 season.
But there was no All-Star Game last year due to the pandemic.
This year, despite the fact that there were even more cases, and the number of victims of COVID-19 in the United States exceeded half a million people, it was decided not to give up the match.
After all, the favorite of American liberals, Joe Biden, promised to vaccinate 90% of the country's population by April 19 (without mentioning, of course, that both the vaccine and the algorithms for its delivery to the States were developed under his predecessor), which means that by the summer there will be a terrible virus defeated.
The Atlanta authorities were already in full swing preparing for the landmark event, scheduled for July 13, when suddenly last Friday the MLB leadership, represented by its Commissioner Robert Manfred Jr., announced that there would be no All-Star Game in the capital of Georgia.
“I decided that the best way to demonstrate our values was to move the All-Stat Game and MLB draft to another city,” said Manfred.
What is the matter and what have the values to do with it?
The reason is a law passed in late March in Georgia limiting the possibility of election fraud at all levels.
State legislators have learned the lessons of the November 2020 presidential election and the US Senate re-election in January this year, when the Republican state unexpectedly sent two liberal Democratic senators to Washington.
The new law seriously limits the possibilities of remote and early voting, including by mail.
Now, in order to receive the mailing newsletter, you need to present strong arguments, as well as - which is very important - an identity card, at least a driver's license.
Acceptance of mail ballots is limited to the closing hour of polling stations (which excludes the possibility of the appearance of "magic" bags with ballots for one of the candidates in the middle of the night, as happened more than once during the November elections).
Observers from each candidate have the right to be present during the counting of votes.
On the whole, very competent and prudent amendments to the electoral legislation, which, as the events of recent months in the United States have shown, leave not even loopholes, but huge holes for abuse and falsification.
As soon as both houses of Congress voted in favor of this law, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp promptly - in two hours!
- approved it with his signature, the Democrats attacked the "peach state" with such fury, as if the times of the war of the North and South had returned and Atlanta again became a citadel of Confederate resistance (which is very vividly described in the great novel by Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind" - however, then the Democrats were just the party of the southerners-slave-owners, and the republicans expressed the interests of the northerners-abolitionists).
A variety of human rights activists and activists unanimously yelled that the new law is directed against voters of color, as it will largely "strip them of their right to vote."
(I wonder how? Colored voters can't come to the polls in person? Or are they not literate enough to get their papers?) Democratic minority leader in the Georgia Senate, Gloria Butler, said the new law is a "voter suppression tactic" returning Americans to the time of the Jim Crow laws (laws that limited suffrage based on electoral tax and literacy, which cut off most of the colored population from the ballot boxes).
Democrats have branded the new law "disgusting" and "racist," although what is racist about showing an identity document at a polling station is decidedly incomprehensible.
Another thing is that the bill adopted in Georgia seriously limits the possibility of voting for illegal migrants, whom the Democrats are going to bring to the United States by the millions to strengthen their electoral base - but this is precisely what liberal critics prefer to shyly keep silent about.
And since the Democrats could not prevent the adoption of this law (they are in the minority in both houses of the Congress of Georgia), they only had to vent their anger on the authorities of the state and Atlanta.
No sooner had the ink dried on the law signed by Governor Kemp, when a dark-skinned Congresswoman Park Cannon tried to burst into his office.
Kemp prudently locked himself in the lock, and Cannon, justifying her name, banged on the door with her fists until several stalwart policemen dragged her out of the building, and a violent lady burst out and shouted: "Where are you taking me?"
It was then that the decision was made to "punish" Georgia for arbitrariness that runs counter to the "party line" - and this line is now the only one in America, left-liberal - and for the worst thing that liberal brains can imagine: for solidarity with the "Florida monster ", by the former US President Donald Trump.
This solidarity was seen by the vigilant Democrats in Governor Brian Kemp's comments on the adopted law:
“After the November elections last year, I realized, like many of you, that the electoral process in our state needs significant reform.”
And this means that Kemp, albeit not in plain text, but supported Trump's “false”, “outrageous”, “disgusting” (the list of epithets can be continued for a long time) Trump's statements that the elections were rigged and his victory was stolen from him.
True, this recognition was belated: in November-December it was Kemp who was the person who could really influence the non-recognition of the election results, all the data about the falsifications in Georgia were in his hands.
It was not for nothing that Trump called him and literally begged him to make this information public (the Democrats tried to blame the president for this call as well).
But then Kemp got scared.
And now, for some reason, he changed his position - which immediately deserved the curse of the Democrats both in Atlanta and in Washington.
Let's go back, however, to baseball.
This game, like many other sports in the United States, was once reserved for white men (colored baseball players only played in special black leagues), but after World War II this racist practice became a thing of the past.
One of America's greatest baseball players, Hank Aaron (Hammer Hank), who had an unrivaled number of home runs (755) in his career, was also black.
In January of this year, 86-year-old Aaron died in Atlanta from the effects of a coronavirus vaccine.
And now his name has been raised on the shield by those who are trying to accuse the authorities of Georgia of racism.
MLB announced its decision to postpone the All-Star Game on Friday, and on Saturday, Trump's predecessor, renowned progressive and liberal B.H.
Obama warmly welcomed the decision on his Twitter.
“Congratulations to MLB for advocating for the right to vote for all citizens.
There is no better way for Americans to honor the memory of the great Hank Aaron who has always set an example. "
Indeed, Hank Aaron has faced racist incidents throughout his career and was known, in addition to sporting records, for his consistent anti-racist stance.
But what does this have to do with restricting mail-in voting or requiring an ID?
It seems that B.Kh.
Obama speculates on the name of the great baseball player with the same ease with which All-Star Game ticket dealers speculate on the Internet.
Baseball, however, is not limited to.
The new law was opposed by the Coca-Cola Company, which is headquartered in Atlanta.
“Voting is a fundamental right in America, and we have long advocated making it easier.
We want to be very clear and say in no uncertain terms that we are disappointed with Georgia's voting law, ”said President James Quincy.
At the same time, as snide journalists from Fox note, in order to participate in the company's annual meeting of shareholders, its management requires confirmation of online registration, an entrance ticket and a photo ID.
Well, really - how can you compare such an important event as a meeting of shareholders with some kind of presidential election?
And the top management of Delta Air Lines, also based in Atlanta - one of the largest, one might say, structure-forming corporations in Georgia - literally changed their shoes in the air.
Immediately after Governor Kemp signed the bill, Delta CEO Ed Bastian rushed to issue a memorandum praising the new law.
According to Bastian, he "significantly improved" the electoral process and even "expanded the opportunities" for voting.
Bumps immediately fell on Bastian's head: how did he even dare to oppose the party line when President Biden himself called the lawmaking of Georgia's congressmen "anti-American" and "sick"?
"What happened to Delta, which even before the incident with George Floyd in every possible way positioned itself as being as friendly as possible to people of color, gays, transgender people and other minorities?"
- fighters for human rights wondered.
A call for a boycott of the company began to gain momentum on the network: the hashtag #BoycotteDelta went viral and about 40 thousand tweets were devoted to the refusal of Delta Air Lines services.
Frightened, Bastian immediately backed down: they say, he did not read the final version of the bill properly, and that, of course, is unacceptable and does not correspond to Delta's values.
Anyway, the whole point of this bill "is based on a lie - allegedly in Georgia in the 2020 elections, vote rigging was widely used, but this is simply not true."
At this point, Bastian received a slap in the face from Kemp: he said that the new statement by the Delta CEO "sharply contrasts with our conversations with the company's management", "ignores the content of the new law" and "continues to spread false accusations" by liberal activists.
And on the evening of April 3, a gun of the main caliber rumbled: former US President Donald Trump called on the Americans to boycott those companies and organizations that criticized Georgia's new electoral law.
“It's finally time for Republicans and Conservatives to fight back - we have more people than they certainly have!
- Trump said.
- Boycott Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS and Merck.
Don't buy their products until they give up.
We can play this game better than they can. "
For Trump, radical leftists have played dirty games for many years, boycotting the products of companies that claimed or did something that offended them.
From this practice has grown the current "culture of abolition", which has become the main weapon of liberals in the fight against the supporters of traditional values.
And you need to beat them with their own weapons.
Trump reiterated that the Democrats "rigged and stole our 2020 presidential election, which we won by a large margin," and added that they are also "boycotting and intimidating companies to force them to comply."
He urged his supporters never to give up and warned: “Left-wing radicals will destroy our country if we let them.
We will never become a socialist country! "
The involvement of large companies - as well as sports organizations - in political strife in the United States indicates that American society remains deeply divided and polarized.
No matter how hard the democrats try to portray old man Biden as a pacifier, healing the wounds inflicted on the American nation, no rapprochement actually occurs.
On the contrary, the fault lines are only deepening, and it is the liberals and the radical left, with their militant tolerance, "voukism" and "culture of abolition", that are primarily to blame for this.
An attempt to use such a cult game for the United States as baseball in the fight against conservatives they hate is from the same series.
At the same time, leftists and fighters for "human rights" (understood already and already - white cisgender men are already denied them) do not care at all that, while "punishing" Georgia for "racist" electoral laws by transferring the Game of All Stars to another, more liberal place, they rob tens of thousands of families in the state's sports industry.
Who cares about the welfare of ordinary hard workers, if all the thoughts of the liberals are focused on helping illegal migrants and idlers sitting on benefits?
But baseball is a bit of a pity.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.